Plexon Inc, the leader in advanced hardware and software solutions for neuroscience research, announced today that the newest software release for its flagship product – the OmniPlex® Neural Data Acquisition System – is available online.

Possibly the most significant benefit of OmniPlex Software 1.7 is that when used with the DigiAmp, it yields an almost negligible system latency of less than 2 milliseconds! This figure is the actual end-to-end latency through the entire OmniPlex system from hardware input to hardware output, including an online user client program. The exceptionally low latency is achieved with either the DigiAmp (64 through 256 channels) or MiniDigi™ (16 through 64 channels).

OmniPlex System users will benefit from increased accuracy of timestamps through aligned spike extraction. As compared to standard thresholding in which a spike’s timestamp is the time at which it crossed the threshold, aligned extraction assigns the timestamp as the time of the positive or negative spike peak. More practically, PCA clusters will be more compact and better separated, making spike sorting easier and more accurate.

Building on the aligned spike extraction algorithms, OmniPlex Software 1.7 enables a new enhanced PCA feature space. In many cases, enhanced PCA creates a projection which will give superior cluster separation and compactness when compared to standard PCA. The combination of aligned extraction and enhanced PCA will often give even better results, in terms of cluster quality, than either feature used alone.

OmniPlex’s popular online spike sorting functionality has once again expanded! Automatic spike sorting can now be performed in 2D polygon sorting mode. After sorting of the spike snapshot is complete, an ellipse is fitted to each cluster that is found by the auto-sort. Similarly, crossing waveforms in the main spike display will now produce the corresponding 2D sorting ellipses as an alternative to manually drawing contours. As a bonus, manually-drawn contours can be automatically “cleaned up” and converted to ellipses.

Customers can read more about the above and many more new features, enhancements and bug fixes made possible through OmniPlex Software 1.7 as well as download the program at www.plexon.com. This program upgrade is available at no charge for existing systems as part of Plexon’s Lifetime Technical Support commitment to our customers.

About Plexon Inc Plexon is a pioneer and leading innovator of custom, high performance data acquisition and analysis solutions specifically designed for neuroscience research. Our equipment and solutions lay the foundation for research performed around the globe in essential areas such as basic science, brain-machine interfaces (BMI), neurodegenerative diseases, addictive behaviors and neuroprosthetics. Plexon offers robust, integrated solutions for in vivo neurophysiology, optogenetics, video tracking and behavioral analysis -- all backed by its industry-leading commitment to quality and customer support. www.plexon.com.